I know quite a few of you have had an unexpected visitor, be it corporeal or paranormal. I guess I fall somewhere in between. I’d like to share with you my very recent paranormal experience. I’m still trying to decide if it was the unexpected visitor or was I? Here’s the background. My hubby and I decided to take a vacation, just the two of us. We didn’t plan on visiting anyone, so we were a bit quiet about where we were going. We decided to stay in the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan. Hubby registered in May for our few days in September to make sure we got the Mackinac Suite – it is one of the few with a balcony overlooking the island. At the time, I mentioned that the Grand Hotel is haunted, but to my knowledge, no one had reported any strange goings-on in the suite of rooms we reserved. Boy was I wrong.

The glow from our room.

We arrived to find that our room was ready, but our luggage would be sent up later. We decided to check out the room prior to sightseeing. Aside from the unique decorating, the room had a wonderful feel to it. The furnishing was comfy and the view breathtaking. We left our room and decided to tour the island. Our room was in the older part of the hotel and some ways from the elevators, or lifts as the case may be. We walked down the hall past the other suites and saw where “Somewhere in Time” was filmed. Just before we reached our elevator, I got a giggly sensation in my stomach.

Let me explain. I’m not a sensitive. I’m the usually the person yelling “Run Dude Run!” when in a scary situation. But I do see some shadows of the past (residual haunts) and when there is an active paranormal event, my stomach gets giggly. You know the feeling: you’re trying to hold back a laugh, trying to be kind – like when the Red Pen tells me about her fear of people on stilts.

I told the hubby, and he gave me a sympathetic look and told me I was no doubt hungry. I let it go. I was hungry.

The first night, hubby was exhausted, and I was wide awake. I was tempted to go out on the balcony but didn’t want to wake him. I had the giggly feeling again. I turned to see if my husband was awake. He started snoring, so that was answered. I pulled up the cover and noticed that there was something odd just beyond him in the corner of the room. There was a dark solid column about five or six feet tall. I checked the meager light that found its way from under the door to the hallway and thought, “Ah ha, it’s the standing lamp in the corner’s shadow.” I snuggled down into the pillows and promptly fell asleep.

In the morning, I was all puffed-up about debunking my own scare when I noticed something. There was no floor lamp in the corner, just a table with two wooden chairs. There was a lamp on the bedside table. I goofed around, but try as I might, I couldn’t get the same effect of a solid column of black shadow to form. My next decision… Do I tell the hubby? I didn’t relish being up all night waiting for it to happen again. This was my vacation away from PEEPs and things that go bump in the night.

That afternoon, I told him over a gin and tonic while we were rocking on the large beautiful porch. I told him how another room (80) was documented as haunted and the servants, housing in town, did have paranormal problems, but that may be because they moved the graveyard before they built there. We related the real haunts that have happened to each of us. It was a fun afternoon, fueled by great scenery and, yes, the gin and tonics.

That evening, dressed to the nines, we walked into the dining room, and the host pulled out my chair and I sat down. It was at that moment I figured it out. We didn’t have an uninvited guest, but someone waiting to pull out the chair for me to sit down. The timing was a bit off, but in the old days, it wasn’t unusual for someone to have a late night dinner.

That night I had my cell phone ready to take a picture, but nothing disturbed my rest, and I slept peacefully through the night.

So I figured I was the guest, right? Or maybe just another echo from the past. Whatever it was, it didn’t sour my time at the hotel, but enhanced it.

Be aware, PEEPs, be it a Motel 6, Grand Hotel, or the Bates Motel, there may just be something waiting, watching and ready to serve.